In his time, Jan Dismas Zelenka was known as the very successful Bohemian composer working for the court chapel in Dresden. After his death, Zelenka was nearly completely forgotten by almost everyone. In our time, Zelenka has a brief resurgence in popularity with the rise of the period instrument movement. Unfortunately, it was thus Zelenka's instrumental secular works not his choral-orchestral sacred works that experienced a revival, thereby revealing Zelenka as a composer of quirky, even weird, music rather than Zelenka ...
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In his time, Jan Dismas Zelenka was known as the very successful Bohemian composer working for the court chapel in Dresden. After his death, Zelenka was nearly completely forgotten by almost everyone. In our time, Zelenka has a brief resurgence in popularity with the rise of the period instrument movement. Unfortunately, it was thus Zelenka's instrumental secular works not his choral-orchestral sacred works that experienced a revival, thereby revealing Zelenka as a composer of quirky, even weird, music rather than Zelenka as a composer of superlatively written and supremely moving music. His Die Responsoriem zum Karfreitag from 1723 is a setting of Passion texts for Good Friday and it is surely one of the great settings of those texts. As performed here by Boni Pueri -- the Czech Boy's Choir -- under the direction of Pavel Horvák and Jakub Martinec, and Musica Florea conducted by Marek Stryncl, Die Responsoriem has the solemnity of the most rigorous counterpoint joined to the intensity of the chromatic...
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